LeVan banjos are made by hand here in the Northern Appalachians - one at a time and no two are exactly alike. My primary practice is designing banjos for individual customers and each banjo I make is a prototype of that design. I’m not a mass-producer. The closest I come to that is the NewVintage openback and FretNaught fretless, which I make in small batches of 3 to 6 - buteven those are not all exactly the same. Because of some of the special features and hand work, my banjos are not designed for mass production.

LeVan banjos are built from the ground up. It’s what’s called “vertical integration”; I do not merely assemble them from parts purchased from other suppliers - I make most of the parts by hand in the shop.

Ken LeVan and LeVan banjos is now part of the Smithsonian Folkways series “North American Banjo Builders”